Hack adds Kindle app to Nook Color

Emma Woollacott, 31st December 2010

Brave Nook Color owners are able to read Kindle books on the device, thanks to a simple hack.

While the Nook is an Android device, it's automatically set to launch the Nook app on startup. This means that it's possible to root the device and enable the Android Market through a straightforward procedure detailed on the NookDevs site.

While users are at it, they can also enable Kobo Reader, access Gmail, play Angry Birds, watch YouTube videos and more.

Of course, by doing this users risk voiding the Nook's warranty, missing out on updates and even of bricking the device. But the author of the hack says it's possible to reverse the process and even remove evidence of the rooting by installing the official 1.0.1 update.

To give it a go, users will need a USB cable, a microSD card of at least 128MB and an SD card reader if their computer doesn’t have one.
In terms of software, on Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7 32 or 64 bit users will need Win32DiskImager.exe, but on Mac or Linux they can get by with tools that ship with the operating system.

Andrei Pushkin of the BlogKindle site says he was able to carry out the hack in five minutes.

"While this works, it’s not 100 percent. Initially I had some problems with apps not downloading via the market app. Reboot fixed that," he says. "Kobo app for android logs in and displays the list of books but then all books get stuck in 'Waiting for download' state. Kindle app didn’t have such problems." [[Kindle]]